By Bob Tedder • Outside the embrace of the interstate highway system with its commercial homogeneity, the American South remains an enigmatic confluence of geography, history and people. After confronting the region’s peculiarities, historians, journalists and literati alike often conclude that – more than geography or lifestyle – the South can best be described as a state of mind. This being the case, it takes an extraordinarily neutral and qualified third party to capture the South’s ephemeral nuances. Fortunately, in 1989 such an observer appeared. V. S. Naipaul, the second-generation son of Indian immigrants born and raised in Trinidad, empowered with a hard-earned Oxford education, chose the region as his sounding board. His selection of subject produced a hauntingly poignant exegesis simply titled “A Turn In The South.”
The geographic texture of Naipaul’s turn through the South is adumbrated in the table of contents where he lists Atlanta, Charleston, Tallahassee, Tuskegee, Jackson, Nashville and Chapel Hill as the geographic touchstones of his observations. However, it is not geography that captures Naipaul’s interest but the mixture of residents. White, black, rich, poor, political or apolitical, Naipaul distills the people’s opinions through the alembics of history, agriculture and religion to produce a portrait congruent with the South-is-a-state-of-mind contention.
Even though Naipaul’s Nobel Prize for Literature lay 22 years in the future, his descriptive and analytical skills are much in evidence. Commenting on a huge 15-by-5 painting of Jesus and Mary Magdalene displayed prominently in a Tallahassee black Baptist church, Naipaul notes, “The Christ was noticeably white, blond, long haired a little bit – as I had noticed in other places – like some paintings of General Custer.” The pastor duly noted she preached Christ was colorless and, besides, “a white Christ is better than no Christ at all.”
This perception of religion’s role in the South is later contrasted with another less-forgiving use: “they [poor whites] were of no account until the Civil War. Because they were needed to fight that war they were evangelized and given their cause; and afterwards as rednecks and Klansmen, still poor still victims, they were held responsible and derided for what was really the racism of the whole society.”
It is simply impossible to demonstrate this book’s value by citing two paltry examples of Naipaul’s moving journey through the region. Nonetheless, taken in its entirety “A Turn In The South,” as it approaches its 30th anniversary, still rings true. Get off the interstate and take this book with you!